Drive

Artwork by Sruthy Rose Mathew

I sat in the mess hall all by myself, scratching away at a slice of cucumber with my teeth. My friends, like all normal college students, were busy with packing at the last minute. I felt my heart racing. Eating alone didn’t affect me anymore. It was what came after on this particular day that I anticipated with apprehension.

I went back to my room. It lacked personality now that it was divested of its books, wall posters, curtains and bedsheets. My roommate had left for home the previous evening. I had nothing to do but wait. I had packed everything, even my tabletop fan. And so I lay on my naked bed, trying to take up as little space as possible, sweating profusely, wishing for the ceiling fan to go faster. I had no task left to distract myself with. One can only check WhatsApp about five times a minute, and get tired of listening to one’s old playlists.

I jerked awake from an uncomfortable lull and switched off the alarm that rung at ten minutes to three. At three o’clock, my “app-based taxi” was waiting for me at the back gate. The driver loaded the overpacked (but impeccably packed) suitcase into the boot with considerable difficulty. I said goodbye to my friends who waved back at me smiling, wishing me a safe trip. My visibly suffering backpack would stay in my hands. I closed the door and gave a final wave to a receding pair of figures and turned to face in the right direction as the car gained speed.

The driver had asked where it was that he was supposed to take me. (They always do that, even if the route shows up on their phones.) Of course, he asked me that in Hindi. I understood enough and rattled off the name of the airport and the terminal.

My Hindi barely exists. When it does, it sounds extremely childish. One of my friends had the audacity to call it “cute”. It heavily depends on a variant of gesture and sign language that I assume everyone understands.

The inside of the car was decent, I thought. It smelled a little weird, but then all cars do. And it was one of the hottest summer days. The air-conditioning was on full blast. The smell of cooling sweat permeated the car. In five minutes, I was rubbing my hands together for some warmth. Already, the landscape had become unfamiliar. I had seen this part of Delhi about five months ago, that too for a similar trip to the airport. This was the place that was reassuring in the way that you knew B came after A. Otherwise, it was too bright, too impersonal, and too bland. It was a large highway flanked by concrete barriers. On the side of each barrier were nests of homes- flats, high rise buildings, slums. The sun is always unforgiving over this stretch of road.

I realized that the backpack was still on my lap, and that I was tightly holding onto it with both my hands. My muscles had gone rigid from it. I took a deep breath and kept the bag aside.

Trips to the airport always did the job of reminding me how much of an outsider I was in the city.

Delhi, I knew, would remain an alien city to me even after three years of undergraduate study there. This was the end of my first. I had not travelled much in the period. I did not know how to communicate in the language of the place. I was terrified of a system of public transport known as the metro. I found the stations confusing and intimidating. Even back home, I had been little acquainted with public modes of travel. Regurgitated from my small town into this sprawling metropolis as a result of my wish for the same, my dreams of a great social and academic life seemed to shrivel in the face of the unyielding reality of Delhi and its Delhi-ness. I stayed in my small college campus. The city would not be expected to care. I told myself the four walls of my room would be enough. I felt estranged from the library, the one place where I usually felt like home. Survival, I decided, would be enough for now. Survive, get used to a new reality, understand it, and learn to play by its rules. As I hurtled towards the airport having stripped everything from my room, I wondered if I had lost more than I had learned.

Around fifteen minutes had elapsed. I had most of the trip left. The driver switched on the music player and some Punjabi song blared from the speakers. I generally do not give a hang about Punjabi songs. I also generally do not like being in their vicinity. But this time, I gave in to the rhythm of the song that was unnatural to me. In that rhythm, I gazed at important buildings lining the roads of South Delhi that all looked the same. The car flowed on the song. The driver received a few phone calls. Turning down the music, he answered two of them briefly, his tone brisk and attentive. The third, he answered at great length with enthusiasm; his Hindi relaxed into informal banter.

A sudden fear seized me. I didn’t know where he was taking me. I had not been checking the live route and trip status. I had also not shared it with anyone. I usually did these things. I opened the app with sweaty fingers and waited while the screen loaded. Goodness, it was alright. We were on the right path. Half an hour more, I could do this. I had to do this if I wanted to get home. I opened my backpack clumsily to fish out my earphones and loudly zipped it closed.

Thirty seconds into an overplayed song, he asked me something. I pulled the earphones away in case he was saying something important, and realized he was asking me if I was a college student.

Oh no, I thought. He’s starting a conversation.

‘What else would I be? I wasn’t exactly selling my suitcase at the college gate!’ I wanted to say. I didn’t say it, in part because I didn’t want to antagonize him, but chiefly because I didn’t know how to say it in Hindi. My pettiness felt suffocated. I responded with an uncertain smile and a ‘Haan.’

Haan is the most versatile and useful reply in the Hindi language. It can carry every emotion I experience in the course of a minute- and that’s quite a lot. Haan has an understated musical quality; its nasal end is soothing but firm. I simply love the word. I use it at least ten times every day. I like to convince myself it tricks people into thinking I know Hindi. It’s also quite similar to the Nghaa (ങ്ഹാ) in my own language- inverted, in some senses. In the mouth of a novice like me, the two words blur together.

He seemed to have suppressed the urge to speak for a full forty-five minutes. For talkative people, that requires huge effort. It was only polite to recognize that and answer his questions. He asked me what my course was, where I was from, and what the food there was like. He complained about the slow traffic to me. I replied with appropriate Haans, or one-word answers. “Name the following” from primary school helped.

He started telling me about himself. His name was Shelab. He had a family of four. His eldest daughter was pursuing a software engineering course in Canada. He was working different jobs to earn enough for both her education and the upkeep of the rest of the family. He recited to me a list of the competitive exams she had aced, and the scholarships she’d won. He was clearly a proud father. I gave him my first genuine smile of the day for safekeeping and allowed myself to lean back and enjoy the trip. This man’s chatter was now calming me down. It was strange that chatter should have such an effect on me.

I saw that I was ten minutes to the airport. Another trial waited to begin there. Life would not let me be comfortable for more than ten minutes. Keeping back my earphones, I pulled out my ID credentials and closed the backpack, patting down the front to make it look like it wouldn’t burst open at any moment.

My heart began to race again as we reached the terminal and stopped in front of the gates. I thanked and handed over the cash to Shelab in the absence of the engine’s purr. The rush of people outside was unsettling. I got out slowly and watched as he heaved to pull my suitcase from the boot.

Giving a grateful smile to Shelab (who responded with a wide-open grin), I awkwardly dragged my heavy suitcase away from the car, knowing that it was mostly thanks to my sense of humour that I survived it.

I now approached the gate with trepidation.